


people aren't supposed to look back.

by ThaliaClio



Series: everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assassination, BAMF Natasha, Backstory, Cuddling & Snuggling, Disjointed, F/M, Hugs, Mentions of Pedophilia, Natasha-centric, Prequel, Red Room, Tony Stark Has A Heart, but you should really read 'so it goes.', can be read as a stand-alone, mentions of discrimination, the ending is happy i swear, there's some triggering stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 10:37:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2345345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThaliaClio/pseuds/ThaliaClio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha is not a good person, never really got the chance to be one. But maybe that's okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	people aren't supposed to look back.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse 5". 
> 
> I wasn't intending on a series, but then this happened. Consider it an interlude.

When Natasha was three, she watched her parents, her sister, her brother die in the snow. It had been so, so cold. She wasn’t wearing shoes, and the snow piled high up to her little knees.

She doesn’t remember watching her father fall to his knees, begging the men with the guns _please, no. not my family._ She doesn’t remember hearing the men laugh when they pull their triggers. She doesn’t remember her mother screaming as they drag her to the back of the house. She doesn’t remember the tears running down her mother’s face when they throw her at the foot of her husband’s body before one points his gun at the back of her head and pulls the trigger. She doesn’t remember her brother cursing and yelling and fighting. She doesn’t remember that when he finally went down, he took down another man with him. She doesn’t remember her sister holding her to her chest as she knelt in the snow. She doesn’t remember her sister spitting in a man’s eye before they cut her throat. She doesn’t remember the men grabbing her roughly as she screamed and cried.

When Natasha was three, her very first memory was of snow up to her knees and a full moon surrounded by stars.

\--

_The man lying next to her on the bed is quiet. She can hear the waves beating against the sand. There’s some quote niggling at the back of her mind about how pointless the tide is, how the grains of sand are the strong ones. She lets the thought float away, concentrating instead on the rhythm of the man’s heartbeat. Slow and steady, the thump thump in her ears reminds her of blood and death and she wishes she was still thinking of the ocean._

_“Anyone ever tell you that you look like Molly Ringwald in every eighties movie every?” Tony says._

_Tasha scoffs softly, breath stirring the hairs on his arm. “Nobody’s ever been that stupid.”_

_There’s silence for a beat then –_

_“You look like Molly Ringwald in every eighties movie ever.”_

_Tasha surprises herself when she laughs. “I’ve always preferred Kate Winslet in Titanic.”_

\--

The first time the Red Room sent Natasha out into the world, she was 13 years old. She was told to kill a German banker. She never found out why, never bothered to ask. Didn’t really care.

It was snowing the night the German called her to his room. She knew he was a pedophile, and she was ready. Despite the weather, she came to his door in a tiny white dress trimmed in lace. His guards let her in without asking; they didn’t even look at her. He had been lying on his bed, naked already. When he beckoned her to come closer, she didn’t even blink. He didn’t even realize what was happening until she slit his throat. Not a drop of blood got on her dress, and Natasha left through the balcony window.

When Natasha was 13, her very first memory of freedom was of snowflakes on her cheeks and the reflection of a crescent moon on the river.

\--

_Tony hums, and Tasha leans into him just a little, closer to the vibrations. “I think I just prefer you.”_

_Tony presses his face into the top of her head and Tasha lets him, wants him to, even. She turns her head from his arm to his chest, rolling over so that she’s no longer the little spoon._

_“Why?” She pretends her voice doesn’t shake and is grateful when he does too._

_Tony doesn’t answer right away and she’s grateful for that too. He lays in silence, stroking her arm at the same pace she strokes his chest._

\--

Natasha left the Red Room when she was 20 years old. They didn’t try to stop her, not really. She knew that they were afraid of her. The thought made her smile when she sipped champagne on a plane to the United States.

Her first job as a freelancer was the son of an oil tycoon in Texas. His father was the one who hired her, and she felt something deep in her chest when she accepted the job. She drank her weight in vodka that night to smother it. When she saw the son, she realized that the job wasn’t just about money. He was sitting in the back corner of a crowded club with another young man halfway on his lap, fingers tangled in one another’s hair and linked at the mouths. When she killed him in his bedroom the next night, she threw up for half an hour.

Natasha’s first memory as her own woman was of vicious satisfaction and the taste of bubbly wine on her tongue as she imagined snow falling from the clouds below her.

\--

_“Because you aren’t good.” There’s a stab of pain in her chest and her hand pauses, but Tony keeps speaking as though he hadn’t noticed. “You don’t want me to save you or the world. You want to fight and tear your way through life, and God is it beautiful. You don’t give a damn about if I lie on my taxes, and the only reason you don’t like that I drink my weight in whiskey is because it’s not vodka._

_You believe in money and blood and getting even. You don’t need me to believe in you, and you don’t need to believe in me because you can handle fucking anything. You don’t give a damn about conventions and ‘should’s. You’re angry and you’re happy with your anger and you love mine. I prefer **you** because you’re violent and independent and stubborn and pissed off and beautiful and because I trust you with my life.”_

\--

When Natasha was 21, she had killed over a dozen men and women that were unrelated to the Red Room and had made millions. She drowned guilt and memories in bottles of vodka and sought redemption between the thighs of men and women.

Justin Hammer hired her to kill Tony Stark on her 22nd birthday. She moved into Stark’s house a month later. She moved into his bed two months later.

When Natasha was 22 years and three months old, she walked into Justin Hammer’s house and shot him between the eyes. He was her first kill that was neither ordered nor paid for. When she came home, blood still splattered on her cheeks and gun still in her hand, Tony kissed her lips and washed her face and said _I love you_ and Natasha slept without nightmares for the first time in 19 years.

\--

_The knife in Tasha’s chest untwists, and instead she feels warm from her hair to her toes. “I like that you make me coffee in the mornings.”_

_Tony laughs and hugs her close and Tasha doesn’t mind that her knife is ten feet away and doesn’t notice that Tony could break her neck because she’s too busy hugging him right back._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Strings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752032) by [letthesongtakeflight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/letthesongtakeflight/pseuds/letthesongtakeflight)




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